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Art Texts Pics is an online magazine published both in Italian and in English. Established in 2010, Art Texts Pics contains interviews, conversations, essays, exhibition previews and event agendas. The magazine covers both well known, institutional realities – such as museum exhibitions, established galleries and foundations – and alternative, young spaces.

ATP: Could you introduce us to Nahum Benari’s 1951 theatrical piece Tubal-Cain? Why did you choose to focus on it and what are its connections with your artwork Na’amah: A Tribute to Nachum Benari?

Hilla Ben Ari: The play draws from the biblical story of Tubal-Cain, the ancestor of the blacksmithing, and his father, Lamech. Through Tubal-Cain’s character, Benari deals with the duality between the powers of creation and destruction, with the tension between the individual and the group and between nature and culture.
The play also touches on the foundations of guilt, punishment, sin and the relationship between a victim and a victimizer. A close reading of the play reveals that Nahum Benari constructed it in the style of a Greek play and made a connection between myths from Jewish sources and the Greek mythology.
Nahum Benari that wrote the play is the brother of my grandfather. He was a writer and intellectual, born in Ukraine in 1893 and came to Israel in 1914. Through the years I knew very little about him and then about 4 years ago I found that he was very much connected to art – wrote articles about art and was one of those who were established the Ein Harod Museum in Israel. I was very excited to find that I have a family roots in the history of the Israeli art and started to explore more about his texts and books. When I get to know the play Tubal-Cain I thought it’s super interesting and much connected to the issues that I’m dealing in my works. So my research was integration of an intimate family dimension along with history and social and cultural issues.

ATP: Why did you decide to focus on the Na’amah character?

HBA: Na’amah, Tubal-Cain’s sister, is actually a relatively peripheral character in the play, but I perceive her as a central key to its meaning: her character represents a presence that was silenced by violent powers which, in this way, were able to break through and become established.
The figure of Na’amah and her father Lamech constructed in the play in a way that call to mind Antigone and Oedipus. Na’amah accompanies her blind father and serves as his eyes; but in contrast to the rebellious Antigone, Na’amah is pleasant and mute. They both meet their death in the face of masculine forcefulness – Na’amah is crushed by Lamech, her father, and dies without the ability to protect herself and Antigone tries to take control of her fate, struggles with the law and then commits suicide.
My interest in the character of Na’amah comes from my ongoing research of female characters whose power is wounded, neutralized or paralyzed because they are situated in a patriarchal and violent society. I have dealt with the tension between power and vulnerability of female characters through various myths such as The Rape of Lucretia, Diana etc.
The Na’amah Project wishes to read the play through its gender-based prism, to expand the critical attitudes that are hidden within it and to use it to examine the question of the presence of the female body and its existence in space, all through drawing attention to the silenced figure of Na’amah

ATP: In your videos, you force bodies in uncomfortable positions close to elements that often represents the order of society. How did you choose the positions of the bodies and the elements for this video?

HBA: The play gave me a great inspiration, for example the image of Na’amah in the bow position it’s a central image which returns a number of times throughout the work: Na’amah the reaper is in a position that suggests a bow; a net is tied to her body, with wheat seeds inside of it. The only visible movements are the movements of her body’s effort to hold the position, and the small movement of the seeds. Na’amah’s body is both a container for the seeds as well as a structure that suggests a grain silo, creating a kind of hybrid of male and female elements. The seeds that gush out of the new “organ” in Na’amah’s body create a representation of excess, nourishment, maternal generosity. The pile on her back resembles an upside down pregnancy. This position is forced on the female body but at the same time it’s a sort of resistance of the body which creates another economy. Na’amah in her bow position also gives another bodily presence to the actions of her two brothers: Yuval, the inventor of music that played with the bow and Tubal-Cain, who invented the bow as an instrument of killing.